That's exactly what I was thinking. But just think: Now when you hear people's cell phones during a movie, you'll know the name and number of the person who disturbed you, so you can call them at 4:00AM and tell them how much you appreciated their call.
Ok, I haven't had any experience with sending the bank a list of checks (which certainly makes sense for larger companies, no so much for smaller ones), but even with this added security effort, what if a check is copied, using the same stock and MICR toner? Does the bank know who the check was made out to? Even if they do, couldn't a payee cash two identical checks? Which one would the bank cash then? And no, they don't always check if the signature is MICR at the bank. They check the MICR account number, yes, but only because it's easier to enter if you just swipe it. The check is still valid if you don't use MICR, the bank may hate you for making them enter it by hand, but it's still valid.
I'm sure each bank probably gets 20 or so checks a day that can't be read for some reason by the magnetic reader. How hard do you really think it would be to send one check through without it? I know we send a few hundred a month without it, the bank doesn't even complain anymore.
What exactly is ever secure about a check? He says it's a check printing company, so what could possibly be secure about it? You can order printable checks from just about anywhere, with all the "security" features on them, get a MICR toner cartridge (if you even care when the bank complains about having to hand-enter your checks because they're not magnetic), and print all the checks you want. This is probably just some kid who's finally figured out how banks operate.
"Security" features on checks usually are only to prevent someone from photocopying the check, and do nothing to stop someone with a box of checks and a laser printer. No matter what you do while printing the check, Checks are not secure. Most businesses print their checks, and print them in the same manner as I just described, and there is nothing that can be done about it, because banks will cash any valid check, which means only that the account number and signature must match their records (you could write the information on a napkin and the bank would take it, it is a valid check), and banks will rarely flag a check for a bad signature.
If someone gets one of your "secure" checks from a client of this guy's company, orders a box of checks from them, and prints checks, then even the client may not realize that they didn't write the check. That's how checks are, deal with it. If you don't trust the person you're writing a check to, don't use a check, it's just that simple. By the way, it is amazing to me how the banks always say "don't give out your account information to anyone" (and no, I'm not talking about PINs) when it's printed on every check. The only thing worth making "secure" (as in unable to be scanned/photocopied) about a check is the signature line, and very few companies do this, since the only effective means I know of to do this requires a color laser printer and an electronic signature image. (red/black printing scheme, etc).
If you really want a top-quality printer, I'd suggest going to your local county auctions. There are often great bargains there. In fact, I have the perfect printer for the original poster's needs, an Apple Color LaserWriter 12/660PS. Fast (though color is a bit slow), crisp, and long service intervals, plus it has ethernet and supports PostScript. If you can find one for what I paid for it ($45, I'm not kidding, with toner even!), buy it, but if you have to pay full price for it ($3000-4000), and need the quality and reliability, it's still worth it. Quality is far better than the HP's, and it's built like a large copier, so service is easier, and parts don't fail as often.
Basically, yes. Which is more expensive, paying someone for the next 30 years (corporation or sysadmin) to keep spam filtering effective to 90-95%, or paying someone for a week to develop an online database-driven mail solution?
Gee, I don't know, what would an OS company with it's back against the wall do? It's not like it's ever happened before. But really, it's a bad patent, but if MS felt like spending the money to get a patent they knew was weak, I say let them. They'll have to sue someone to see any benefit from it, since I'm sure AOL and Yahoo aren't just going to send MS money now, and when they sue, anyone who does even 10 minutes of research on it will see prior art (hell, even some old BBS software in the 80's had this feature), and MS will lose its patent.
Yeah, our patent system sucks here (in the US), but the real problem is that too many companies are afraid of these types of patents. Smart companies think to look up the validity of a patent/IP claim before deciding whether or not to license it. If they didn't, SCO would be rich.
Just something I thought of when I read your post... What about 15 servers, as a single image system cluster? Then you have the maintenance ease of one system to maintain, and the uptime and reliability of 15 systems. If one system goes down, migrate the process to another system.
The only problem I could think of is whether or not something like OpenMosix could properly handle the networking work involved (since the service will only run on one machine at a time, but forked connection processes could migrate to another node, so how would traffic get routed?), and of course, we need a good clustered file system. But if you can answer those two things, wouldn't that be the best of both worlds? (Unless you run windows, of course, then SIS clustering is basically out of the question.)
I agree 100%. Either use something like formmail.pl, or write your own custom CGI program to handle emails. It is trivial to write a mail form, and users who wish to contact you will be at your website anyways, so why make them read the address and fire up their mail client? Hell, depending on your site (if you have user registrations), you could even use a database-driven email system, and eliminate spam entirely. Just let the user fill out the form, store the message in the database, and when you reply, they should be able to view messages sent to them the next time they log in to your site. You won't get spam, since you aren't using SMTP, but you still have a good (and probably better, since it is more reliable) system of communicating with your customers.
Or, he could get a cell phone/pda combo, like the new Samsung I500, the I330, one of the Handspring Treos, or any of the countless other PDA/Phones. Find something that has good battery life and room for memory expansion (flash, memory stick, etc... Which the I500 sorely lacks, but it still looks good.), and you could use it to replace the iPod. Find games for it, and away with the Game Boy. Do you really need the leatherman? Try a pocket knife, you know, where the feature item is actually the knife, not the 50,000 other things. The leatherman, big swiss army, etc. may be geek cool, but they're a pain in the ass to carry with you everywhere.
If you're just stubborn, have you considered the dockers mobile pants? (The ones with the zippered pockets on both legs and deeper side pockets with zippered compartments) I have a couple pairs of them, and they work great, and as long as you don't overstuff them, still look just like regular pants.
You're right, but here's the thing. What will the schools do with that money? They'll probably upgrade to the latest version of Windows, or accept "free" upgrades from Microsoft for a fixed term as payment. Microsoft wants the money to go to schools, because in the end, it benefits them. The more kids then can get to grow up using only Windows, the better for Microsoft. These kids go on to be CEOs and CIOs later in life, and familiarity has a way of clouding judgement, especially in IT. Apple did the same thing years ago, and without their school programs, Apple would probably be out of business today, or at least relegated to special uses like SGI is (though probably a much less profitable area than SGI).
Yeah, I know, it was more a matter of towing the car to my friend's garage after the motor blew, then saying "Hey, what are you doing with those Chevy blocks? I wonder if it would..."
And so it began... Then about 10 people did the same thing, and beat me to finishing. I'm just now finishing it up, it's been about a year and a half since then. I really love rotaries, but I just don't yet trust myself with them, and haven't found anyone that really knows them well enough for my tastes yet, and the 20B was not something I was interested in, since I would prefer less rotating weight, spinning much faster. Someday, I'll build a side (Renesis) or peripheral port rotary for 18,000 rpm, but I don't have the time or resources for that at the moment, since there's just too much engineering and testing involved. Turbo's aren't of much interest to me, really, I prefer throttle response to power, and higher compression to higher boost.
I did get the 350 as close as possible, though, as I'm using an 8000rpm redline, and the entire rotating assembly is balanced, with lightweight components (including a button-style Quartermaster clutch). I still have the 13B, and I may get around to rebuilding it soon, but I wanted to do something different with the car. The 13B I'll save for something lighter. Anyone know what it takes to get a formula-style car street legal?
Wait, for this to be flamebait, doesn't there have to be someone that disagrees with me? I mean, I'm not really baiting flames if I know the majority (read: all) agrees with me.
Thank you. Yeah, it was (nearly) a 0-day exploit. We had a couple servers freeze on us, and after looking at the ethernet traffic on the next attack, I noticed the ping floods, and figured it out. I did some testing (on the CEO and VP, naturally [small company, all good friends at the top]), and I think it was the next day that we came up with the idea while eating lunch. It was a day or three after that that the advisory was posted. Actually, that exploit alone got me permission to use Linux on production systems for about a year after that (since the mail servers [Linux] were the only exposed systems to not be affected), then back to Windows... (ugh...)
It's not worth fighting in court, in fact the guy was awarded unemployment for a short time, but if you're paying someone to do work that *HAS* to be done on the computer, and he hasn't touched the computer for an hour, you fire him. This was a low-level data-entry person, and we had suspected it for a while, but the exploit (which there was no patch for for about another week) allowed us to prove to ourselves that our assumptions were correct. When the employee tells you he has used his computer to do X, Y, and Z in the last hour, and his computer hasn't worked (and X, Y, and Z weren't done), you get rid of him, and find someone else. So you pay unemployment if he fights it, no big deal, at least you don't expect a return on your money, whereas if you have him working for you, you expect him to do something, and it costs you more when it later has to be done by someone else, who doesn't have time to do it, because they're actually busy.
Point is, consequences and morale be damned, why let employees get away with that? If anything, at least you keep the other employees from following the example set by the lazy, lying employee.
Sure, the time can be doctored, but it wasn't, and the machine might have survived the ping (I checked after sending the ping, while the employee was in the break room getting coffee, it was locked), but if you're at the point where senior staff believes that the guy is unproductive, and you need to prove it, it's the perfect way to do it. Sure, it's not a good documentation trail for unemployment, but why waste a $100k+/yr supervisor's time to do all the paperwork for a $6/hr data-entry clerk. Sometimes it's just not worth taking the time to cover your ass, especially if your in-house attorneys are having a slow month.
That reminds me of the "dough repair kit" from my pizza delivery days. Works great when you call the other local stores ahead of time, then have the new person call them to see if they have any, since you're out of them. Have each one say that the next store probably has one, then the last one use your cell phone, so that you can finally let them in on the reason everyone else is laughing.
Do what I did, find the latest MS exploit, (when I did this it was the ping one in 95/98 that locked up the computer, but didn't BSOD, just sat there) and every once in a while, lock his computer up. We actually used this to fire someone, since we suspected that he was sitting at his desk doing nothing most of the time. We locked it up, and asked him an hour later what he had been doing for that hour. He told us he had done quite a bit of work, at which point we asked him to show it to us, and he realized that his computer was frozen. We then informed him that it had in fact been that way for an hour, and that he could use the next hour to pack his things.
Yeah, in fact it'd be impossible, because programs are compiled to machine language, which is definitely different between x86, Sparc, and HP-PARISC. Even if you emulated the op codes and syscalls, you'd still have all the big-endian vs. little-endian issues. You can't have binary compatibility between those two, unless you take the java route and force all machines to emulate a common machine.
Well, but to be fair, the shell update for NT 3.51 was available before 95 was released, and that shell is the same as 4.0, and was soon followed by the NT 4 betas, which also started before the release of 95.
Ugh, I shudder to think of having to deal with that desktop for an entire semester! It's horrible, nothing is intuitive, and it's uglier than twm! Sun would probably like to think that they were the inspiration for Gnome and KDE, but if they were, it's only because the project creators were so disgusted by CDE.
No, don't use Knoppix/Gnoppix, it will actually make things harder to administer. The best route here is to use a local hard drive for swap,/tmp, and machine-specific/etc/localmachine files, but have a root (read-only) NFS mount from a central server, as well as the user (/home/xx, read/write) mounts. Use a good caching filesystem for/etc,/usr,/bin,/sbin, and/opt (read-only), and you'll cut back on the network traffic. This makes upgrading easy, keeps the students files accessible from any machine, and means that things like kernel upgrades, security patches, etc. only need to be done once. Just set up the root mount as a directory on the server, and set the tftp/bootp servers up. Get decent ethernet cards in all the machines (that allow booting from tftp), and you're done.
As for which operating system to use, it really doesn't matter, but why pay for licenses if you don't need to? If the PHB's don't like Linux, use Solaris, but otherwise there's no reason to use a commercial Unix. If you feel that you need to, put Solaris on the main server, with Linux clients, but realise that this may limit you on caching filesystem choice. As for what to install, use GDM/KDM for logins, install both Gnome and KDE, and Evolution, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, and whatever other apps (oregano/spice, verilog, anjuta, jdk, etc...) you need, and you should be set. Set links on the shared/etc to/etc/localmachine/xx for any files you need to. This actually seems like a good situation for something like Gentoo or *BSD, since you'll probably be very selective in what software is installed, and need to keep up with security patches/new versions. Allow users to mount the cdrom drives (on their local machines), floppies, and usb disks, but don't allow the machines to boot any other way than tftp.
Personally, I don't know if the Prius is well built or not. I know that most Toyotas are in fact very well built, and was talking about the cheap cars in general. Even if a cheap car is well built, the quality of the parts is often low (hence cheap), and something like the Echo or Prius may be assembled well, but that doesn't matter when the parts fail. All carmakers do a good job with their top models, it's the entry models that tend to suck, with the exception of Honda (but they really only have 2 models of cars now, so that shouldn't count).
As you may have noticed, I have a 2002 Hyundai Accent, and I'm on my second (manual) transmission and the clutch is slipping at 26k. I drive hard (in other cars, this one's just too slow), sure, but I don't miss a shift, and for the synchros to crack after 20k is a sign of bad quality. Same with the clutch. It's a cheap clutch, and can't handle much use, whereas my 1995 Integra's clutch lasted about 90k, and I was much harder on it.
For the most part, quality and cheap are mutually exclusive, and most would rather give you a warranty than raise the cost of the car.
Granny's Speed Shop makes the motor and tranny mounts, it fits, and with the Richmond T10 I have, actually uses the stock driveshaft (with a TH400 front yoke). There are actually a lot of cars I've seen with this swap, but most are just a crate motor. I just took the time/money to build up the block (Steel Crank, Eagle 4340 H-beam rods,.030" over JE Lightweight Pistons, Dart Pro1 230cc heads). As for the computer, sometimes using the latest technology is just a headache, so a Holley 750cfm four-barrel carb works fine, thanks.
Oh yeah, as a follow up: Anyone want to buy a 2002 Hyundai Accent base model with no A/C and factory dents (dealer hit it parking) on the driver's side? It's a sarcGREAT/sarc car!
Yeah, the only question I have is: Is the game realistic enough to show you getting passed by all the other models?
But yeah, it's another crappy econobox FWD. But people buy econoboxen because they can't afford better cars, and the company they buy from has some cool marketing gimmick. Cheap cars don't have to be built well, handle well, or perform well. They just have to get good gas mileage and either look good or be cheaper than the competition. Not all FWD cars are bad, just the cheap ones. The major problem is the open diffs. A good FWD car with a good suspension and a Limited Slip Differential (Integra Type R, Sentra SE-R SpecV, GTI, etc.) will handle as well as a RWD car, just look at BTCC (British Touring Car Champ...) as an example.
Either that, or they're like me, and have to buy something cheap and quick because they just blew the engine in their car (91 Mazda RX-7, now rebuilt with a 480HP built Chevy 350, and therefore REALLY expensive to drive around for fun at $1.60/gal. [~8-10mpg])
As an extra note, if you can do this with Linux, OpenMosix becomes an option. This way, the users can all use (to them) a single server which you administer, and the load is distributed fairly evenly throughout the cluster. SSI clusters and centralized management can really eliminate a lot of headaches and provide the most performance benefit (since *Mosix automatically tries to get the best performance for a process) when you have 1000 users to support.
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That's exactly what I was thinking. But just think: Now when you hear people's cell phones during a movie, you'll know the name and number of the person who disturbed you, so you can call them at 4:00AM and tell them how much you appreciated their call.
Ok, I haven't had any experience with sending the bank a list of checks (which certainly makes sense for larger companies, no so much for smaller ones), but even with this added security effort, what if a check is copied, using the same stock and MICR toner? Does the bank know who the check was made out to? Even if they do, couldn't a payee cash two identical checks? Which one would the bank cash then? And no, they don't always check if the signature is MICR at the bank. They check the MICR account number, yes, but only because it's easier to enter if you just swipe it. The check is still valid if you don't use MICR, the bank may hate you for making them enter it by hand, but it's still valid.
I'm sure each bank probably gets 20 or so checks a day that can't be read for some reason by the magnetic reader. How hard do you really think it would be to send one check through without it? I know we send a few hundred a month without it, the bank doesn't even complain anymore.
What exactly is ever secure about a check? He says it's a check printing company, so what could possibly be secure about it? You can order printable checks from just about anywhere, with all the "security" features on them, get a MICR toner cartridge (if you even care when the bank complains about having to hand-enter your checks because they're not magnetic), and print all the checks you want. This is probably just some kid who's finally figured out how banks operate.
"Security" features on checks usually are only to prevent someone from photocopying the check, and do nothing to stop someone with a box of checks and a laser printer. No matter what you do while printing the check, Checks are not secure. Most businesses print their checks, and print them in the same manner as I just described, and there is nothing that can be done about it, because banks will cash any valid check, which means only that the account number and signature must match their records (you could write the information on a napkin and the bank would take it, it is a valid check), and banks will rarely flag a check for a bad signature.
If someone gets one of your "secure" checks from a client of this guy's company, orders a box of checks from them, and prints checks, then even the client may not realize that they didn't write the check. That's how checks are, deal with it. If you don't trust the person you're writing a check to, don't use a check, it's just that simple. By the way, it is amazing to me how the banks always say "don't give out your account information to anyone" (and no, I'm not talking about PINs) when it's printed on every check. The only thing worth making "secure" (as in unable to be scanned/photocopied) about a check is the signature line, and very few companies do this, since the only effective means I know of to do this requires a color laser printer and an electronic signature image. (red/black printing scheme, etc).
If you really want a top-quality printer, I'd suggest going to your local county auctions. There are often great bargains there. In fact, I have the perfect printer for the original poster's needs, an Apple Color LaserWriter 12/660PS. Fast (though color is a bit slow), crisp, and long service intervals, plus it has ethernet and supports PostScript. If you can find one for what I paid for it ($45, I'm not kidding, with toner even!), buy it, but if you have to pay full price for it ($3000-4000), and need the quality and reliability, it's still worth it. Quality is far better than the HP's, and it's built like a large copier, so service is easier, and parts don't fail as often.
Basically, yes. Which is more expensive, paying someone for the next 30 years (corporation or sysadmin) to keep spam filtering effective to 90-95%, or paying someone for a week to develop an online database-driven mail solution?
Gee, I don't know, what would an OS company with it's back against the wall do? It's not like it's ever happened before. But really, it's a bad patent, but if MS felt like spending the money to get a patent they knew was weak, I say let them. They'll have to sue someone to see any benefit from it, since I'm sure AOL and Yahoo aren't just going to send MS money now, and when they sue, anyone who does even 10 minutes of research on it will see prior art (hell, even some old BBS software in the 80's had this feature), and MS will lose its patent.
Yeah, our patent system sucks here (in the US), but the real problem is that too many companies are afraid of these types of patents. Smart companies think to look up the validity of a patent/IP claim before deciding whether or not to license it. If they didn't, SCO would be rich.
Just something I thought of when I read your post... What about 15 servers, as a single image system cluster? Then you have the maintenance ease of one system to maintain, and the uptime and reliability of 15 systems. If one system goes down, migrate the process to another system.
The only problem I could think of is whether or not something like OpenMosix could properly handle the networking work involved (since the service will only run on one machine at a time, but forked connection processes could migrate to another node, so how would traffic get routed?), and of course, we need a good clustered file system. But if you can answer those two things, wouldn't that be the best of both worlds? (Unless you run windows, of course, then SIS clustering is basically out of the question.)
I agree 100%. Either use something like formmail.pl, or write your own custom CGI program to handle emails. It is trivial to write a mail form, and users who wish to contact you will be at your website anyways, so why make them read the address and fire up their mail client? Hell, depending on your site (if you have user registrations), you could even use a database-driven email system, and eliminate spam entirely. Just let the user fill out the form, store the message in the database, and when you reply, they should be able to view messages sent to them the next time they log in to your site. You won't get spam, since you aren't using SMTP, but you still have a good (and probably better, since it is more reliable) system of communicating with your customers.
Or, he could get a cell phone/pda combo, like the new Samsung I500, the I330, one of the Handspring Treos, or any of the countless other PDA/Phones. Find something that has good battery life and room for memory expansion (flash, memory stick, etc... Which the I500 sorely lacks, but it still looks good.), and you could use it to replace the iPod. Find games for it, and away with the Game Boy. Do you really need the leatherman? Try a pocket knife, you know, where the feature item is actually the knife, not the 50,000 other things. The leatherman, big swiss army, etc. may be geek cool, but they're a pain in the ass to carry with you everywhere.
If you're just stubborn, have you considered the dockers mobile pants? (The ones with the zippered pockets on both legs and deeper side pockets with zippered compartments) I have a couple pairs of them, and they work great, and as long as you don't overstuff them, still look just like regular pants.
You're right, but here's the thing. What will the schools do with that money? They'll probably upgrade to the latest version of Windows, or accept "free" upgrades from Microsoft for a fixed term as payment. Microsoft wants the money to go to schools, because in the end, it benefits them. The more kids then can get to grow up using only Windows, the better for Microsoft. These kids go on to be CEOs and CIOs later in life, and familiarity has a way of clouding judgement, especially in IT. Apple did the same thing years ago, and without their school programs, Apple would probably be out of business today, or at least relegated to special uses like SGI is (though probably a much less profitable area than SGI).
Yeah, I know, it was more a matter of towing the car to my friend's garage after the motor blew, then saying "Hey, what are you doing with those Chevy blocks? I wonder if it would..."
And so it began... Then about 10 people did the same thing, and beat me to finishing. I'm just now finishing it up, it's been about a year and a half since then. I really love rotaries, but I just don't yet trust myself with them, and haven't found anyone that really knows them well enough for my tastes yet, and the 20B was not something I was interested in, since I would prefer less rotating weight, spinning much faster. Someday, I'll build a side (Renesis) or peripheral port rotary for 18,000 rpm, but I don't have the time or resources for that at the moment, since there's just too much engineering and testing involved. Turbo's aren't of much interest to me, really, I prefer throttle response to power, and higher compression to higher boost.
I did get the 350 as close as possible, though, as I'm using an 8000rpm redline, and the entire rotating assembly is balanced, with lightweight components (including a button-style Quartermaster clutch). I still have the 13B, and I may get around to rebuilding it soon, but I wanted to do something different with the car. The 13B I'll save for something lighter. Anyone know what it takes to get a formula-style car street legal?
Wait, for this to be flamebait, doesn't there have to be someone that disagrees with me? I mean, I'm not really baiting flames if I know the majority (read: all) agrees with me.
Thank you. Yeah, it was (nearly) a 0-day exploit. We had a couple servers freeze on us, and after looking at the ethernet traffic on the next attack, I noticed the ping floods, and figured it out. I did some testing (on the CEO and VP, naturally [small company, all good friends at the top]), and I think it was the next day that we came up with the idea while eating lunch. It was a day or three after that that the advisory was posted. Actually, that exploit alone got me permission to use Linux on production systems for about a year after that (since the mail servers [Linux] were the only exposed systems to not be affected), then back to Windows... (ugh...)
It's not worth fighting in court, in fact the guy was awarded unemployment for a short time, but if you're paying someone to do work that *HAS* to be done on the computer, and he hasn't touched the computer for an hour, you fire him. This was a low-level data-entry person, and we had suspected it for a while, but the exploit (which there was no patch for for about another week) allowed us to prove to ourselves that our assumptions were correct. When the employee tells you he has used his computer to do X, Y, and Z in the last hour, and his computer hasn't worked (and X, Y, and Z weren't done), you get rid of him, and find someone else. So you pay unemployment if he fights it, no big deal, at least you don't expect a return on your money, whereas if you have him working for you, you expect him to do something, and it costs you more when it later has to be done by someone else, who doesn't have time to do it, because they're actually busy.
Point is, consequences and morale be damned, why let employees get away with that? If anything, at least you keep the other employees from following the example set by the lazy, lying employee.
Sure, the time can be doctored, but it wasn't, and the machine might have survived the ping (I checked after sending the ping, while the employee was in the break room getting coffee, it was locked), but if you're at the point where senior staff believes that the guy is unproductive, and you need to prove it, it's the perfect way to do it. Sure, it's not a good documentation trail for unemployment, but why waste a $100k+/yr supervisor's time to do all the paperwork for a $6/hr data-entry clerk. Sometimes it's just not worth taking the time to cover your ass, especially if your in-house attorneys are having a slow month.
That reminds me of the "dough repair kit" from my pizza delivery days. Works great when you call the other local stores ahead of time, then have the new person call them to see if they have any, since you're out of them. Have each one say that the next store probably has one, then the last one use your cell phone, so that you can finally let them in on the reason everyone else is laughing.
Do what I did, find the latest MS exploit, (when I did this it was the ping one in 95/98 that locked up the computer, but didn't BSOD, just sat there) and every once in a while, lock his computer up. We actually used this to fire someone, since we suspected that he was sitting at his desk doing nothing most of the time. We locked it up, and asked him an hour later what he had been doing for that hour. He told us he had done quite a bit of work, at which point we asked him to show it to us, and he realized that his computer was frozen. We then informed him that it had in fact been that way for an hour, and that he could use the next hour to pack his things.
Yeah, in fact it'd be impossible, because programs are compiled to machine language, which is definitely different between x86, Sparc, and HP-PARISC. Even if you emulated the op codes and syscalls, you'd still have all the big-endian vs. little-endian issues. You can't have binary compatibility between those two, unless you take the java route and force all machines to emulate a common machine.
Well, but to be fair, the shell update for NT 3.51 was available before 95 was released, and that shell is the same as 4.0, and was soon followed by the NT 4 betas, which also started before the release of 95.
Ugh, I shudder to think of having to deal with that desktop for an entire semester! It's horrible, nothing is intuitive, and it's uglier than twm! Sun would probably like to think that they were the inspiration for Gnome and KDE, but if they were, it's only because the project creators were so disgusted by CDE.
No, don't use Knoppix/Gnoppix, it will actually make things harder to administer. The best route here is to use a local hard drive for swap, /tmp, and machine-specific /etc/localmachine files, but have a root (read-only) NFS mount from a central server, as well as the user (/home/xx, read/write) mounts. Use a good caching filesystem for /etc, /usr, /bin, /sbin, and /opt (read-only), and you'll cut back on the network traffic. This makes upgrading easy, keeps the students files accessible from any machine, and means that things like kernel upgrades, security patches, etc. only need to be done once. Just set up the root mount as a directory on the server, and set the tftp/bootp servers up. Get decent ethernet cards in all the machines (that allow booting from tftp), and you're done.
/etc to /etc/localmachine/xx for any files you need to. This actually seems like a good situation for something like Gentoo or *BSD, since you'll probably be very selective in what software is installed, and need to keep up with security patches/new versions. Allow users to mount the cdrom drives (on their local machines), floppies, and usb disks, but don't allow the machines to boot any other way than tftp.
As for which operating system to use, it really doesn't matter, but why pay for licenses if you don't need to? If the PHB's don't like Linux, use Solaris, but otherwise there's no reason to use a commercial Unix. If you feel that you need to, put Solaris on the main server, with Linux clients, but realise that this may limit you on caching filesystem choice. As for what to install, use GDM/KDM for logins, install both Gnome and KDE, and Evolution, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, and whatever other apps (oregano/spice, verilog, anjuta, jdk, etc...) you need, and you should be set. Set links on the shared
Personally, I don't know if the Prius is well built or not. I know that most Toyotas are in fact very well built, and was talking about the cheap cars in general. Even if a cheap car is well built, the quality of the parts is often low (hence cheap), and something like the Echo or Prius may be assembled well, but that doesn't matter when the parts fail. All carmakers do a good job with their top models, it's the entry models that tend to suck, with the exception of Honda (but they really only have 2 models of cars now, so that shouldn't count).
As you may have noticed, I have a 2002 Hyundai Accent, and I'm on my second (manual) transmission and the clutch is slipping at 26k. I drive hard (in other cars, this one's just too slow), sure, but I don't miss a shift, and for the synchros to crack after 20k is a sign of bad quality. Same with the clutch. It's a cheap clutch, and can't handle much use, whereas my 1995 Integra's clutch lasted about 90k, and I was much harder on it.
For the most part, quality and cheap are mutually exclusive, and most would rather give you a warranty than raise the cost of the car.
Granny's Speed Shop makes the motor and tranny mounts, it fits, and with the Richmond T10 I have, actually uses the stock driveshaft (with a TH400 front yoke). There are actually a lot of cars I've seen with this swap, but most are just a crate motor. I just took the time/money to build up the block (Steel Crank, Eagle 4340 H-beam rods, .030" over JE Lightweight Pistons, Dart Pro1 230cc heads). As for the computer, sometimes using the latest technology is just a headache, so a Holley 750cfm four-barrel carb works fine, thanks.
Oh yeah, as a follow up: Anyone want to buy a 2002 Hyundai Accent base model with no A/C and factory dents (dealer hit it parking) on the driver's side? It's a sarcGREAT/sarc car!
Yeah, the only question I have is: Is the game realistic enough to show you getting passed by all the other models?
But yeah, it's another crappy econobox FWD. But people buy econoboxen because they can't afford better cars, and the company they buy from has some cool marketing gimmick. Cheap cars don't have to be built well, handle well, or perform well. They just have to get good gas mileage and either look good or be cheaper than the competition. Not all FWD cars are bad, just the cheap ones. The major problem is the open diffs. A good FWD car with a good suspension and a Limited Slip Differential (Integra Type R, Sentra SE-R SpecV, GTI, etc.) will handle as well as a RWD car, just look at BTCC (British Touring Car Champ...) as an example.
Either that, or they're like me, and have to buy something cheap and quick because they just blew the engine in their car (91 Mazda RX-7, now rebuilt with a 480HP built Chevy 350, and therefore REALLY expensive to drive around for fun at $1.60/gal. [~8-10mpg])
As an extra note, if you can do this with Linux, OpenMosix becomes an option. This way, the users can all use (to them) a single server which you administer, and the load is distributed fairly evenly throughout the cluster. SSI clusters and centralized management can really eliminate a lot of headaches and provide the most performance benefit (since *Mosix automatically tries to get the best performance for a process) when you have 1000 users to support.